Jørgen Skov Sørensen
jss@interchurch.dk
what’s on his mind
what’s on his mind
squatting in the shade
sugar cane in his right hand
dark brown skin
wearing a worn shirt
labeled lifang
what’s on his mind
observing the white
toyota land cruiser
slipping into his village
high speed
on a tarmac road
built by
friendly chinese engineers
what’s on his mind
thoughts
now
and again
interrupted
by the firm horn of
a long distance bus
disappearing into
another
world
of dreams and
imaginations
that only he knows
that will
never
be revealed even by my
firm questioning
what’s on his mind
did he cheer
watching
fc barcelona
beat
ac milan
4 – 0
in the
champions’ league quarter final
down at the
coffee house
last night
drinking
way
too much
or did he go to the mosque
seeking
ways
to perceive
passing white
toyota land cruisers
what’s on his mind
what’s on his mind
still apathetic
squatting in the
shade
several miles
after
a white toyota land cruiser
slipped
through
his village or
has he left
gone home
gone into the sun
gone to his work place
gone through the valley of death
if so
so what
what’s on his mind
what’s on his mind
Jørgen Skov Sørensen, who holds a PhD in intercultural studies from Birmingham University (UK), works professionally with international church management and theological training. About his poetry, which counts both ancient haiku and contemporary formats, he says: “I attempt to convey the impact people have on me–be it through proper conversations or via situations that are really too short to make an informed impact, however still do leave impressions and unanswered questions with me. The latter is well represented by my piece TOYOTA, which is a snap shot of a (non-)encounter in a globalized world.”
Jason Craige Harris is a third-year master's candidate in Black Religion in the African Diaspora and a Marquand merit scholar at Yale Divinity School, where he was recently awarded the Mary Cady Tew Prize for exceptional ability in history and ethics. He earned a bachelor’s in religion and African-American studies from Wesleyan University and received the Giffin Prize for excellence in the Study of Religion, Spurrier Award for ethics, and an official citation for academic excellence issued by the 2009 Connecticut General Assembly. As a fellow at Wesleyan’s Center for the Humanities and a recipient of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Harris wrote a senior honors thesis analyzing theological anthropologies along political and racial fault lines in U.S. Evangelical history. His research and writing are principally concerned with black life, Christianity, (post)colonialism, violence, feminisms, critical social theory, and ultimately planetary flourishing. Concerns arising from the academic study of Africana religion, philosophy, and ethics particularly inform his inquiries. Through an interdisciplinary framework, he probes the systems of values that undergird dominant epistemological, rhetorical, cultural, and religious forms to determine to what extent, if at all, they conduce to robust conceptions of justice. With an eye toward contemporary social problems, he considers the religious strategies and visions that historically marginalized peoples have created to respond to conditions of living and being delimited by restrictive understandings of race, gender, religion, and nation. He is a general editor at the Journal of Postcolonial Networks, where, among other things, he helps to facilitate conversations on race and postcolonial/liberation theologies. As a Christian minister and budding public intellectual, Harris seeks and invites others into more holistic and attuned, less violent and constrained, ways of narrating the self and the divine.
Areas of Interest and Research:
African American Religious Studies
Africana Philosophy
African American Moral, Social, and Political Thought
African American Intellectual History
Liberation and Postcolonial (Christian) Thought
Philosophies of Liberation
Contemporary Religious Thought
Race, Gender, and American Christianities
Evangelicalisms and Pentecostalisms
Histories of Race Discourse in the Americas
(Christian) Social Ethics
Critical Social Theory/Social Philosophy
Theories of Race, Gender, and Power
Method and Theory in the Study of Religion
He is deeply committed to a praxis in which dualities of mind/heart, mind/body, and emotions/thought are consistently challenged and replaced with integrated models of selfhood that cherish self-multiplicity - the point at which the postcolonial becomes self-consciously embodied. He also enjoy taking walks in the coolness of the day, singing, laughing, and writing poetically and theoretically on his lived experience, whatever helps to bring more beauty and justice into the world.